The Parliament of Moldova has approved on Thursday an electoral reform that bans ballots in Russian in the framework of electoral processes, a measure that has been taken in the midst of Ukraine’s invasion.
Thus, the deputies have reformed the country’s Electoral Code with the aim of introducing improvements and «removing ambiguities and contradictions» from the current electoral legislation, according to information from the newspaper ‘Timpul’.
In addition, the Parliament pointed out that this code allows introducing recommendations made by national and international election monitoring missions.
Following the approval of the document after a first reading, the president of the Commission on Appointments, Laws and Immunities, Olesia Stamate, pointed out that it is a «great work done by all the colleagues of the Central Electoral Commission during the last five months to improve the draft electoral legislation».
Thus, the new code provides that in exceptional situations, such as a pandemic or under a state of emergency, elections will be held in some constituencies on two days -Saturday and Sunday-. This will have to be decided 25 days in advance by the Central Electoral Commission.
On the other hand, the document establishes clear principles in relation to the coverage of electoral processes by the media, so that the media companies will have the obligation to «respect the principles of equity and impartiality in the context of this type of coverage».
Otherwise, they could be subject to sanctions by the Audiovisual Council of Moldova.
